The Wandora Unit

Jessy Randall's account of the life cycle of a friendship rings true. It's about high school kids, and aimed at the Young Adult reader, but I am one Old Adult reader who enjoyed it very much. Wanda and Dora, the co-editors of their high school literary magazine, are so close that their friends name them The Wandora Unit, and they live up to it, jointly tyrannizing the rest of the magazine staff and contributors. Not nastily, I should add, but they are the Queen Bees and everyone else might as well go along with it. Dora is the narrator and the focus of the book. We see her soulmate Wanda through Dora's words, and it's quite believable that they are closer than most sisters. The rest of the characters--almost all fellow students, with small walk-on parts for adults--revolve around and are revealed through these two. "Galaxy," the magazine, is almost a character in its own right. As it happens, Jessy Randall is herself a well-regarded poet, and her ear for a good (or hilariously bad) poem serves her well as she shows her characters critiquing the submissions from their fellow students. The last chapter of the book is the magazine itself--a wonderful anchor for the story. The contents, by the way, are from Ms. Randall's real high school magazine, used with the permission of the authors--a brave act on everyone's part. Stories about young people can easily descend to cuteness. This one doesn't, but it doesn't swing to the other pole of lurid ugliness. Some of the kids do stupid and wrong things, but look elsewhere for teen crime sprees. There's a pretty intense love story, and of course there's some heartbreak involved, but you come away pretty sure that everyone will survive. Just like Real Life. The friendship at the heart of the story is fading as Dora and Wanda become more their individual selves and less The Wandora Unit. That, too, is just like Real Life. We all grow up with, and through, others, to become who we end up being. "The Wandora Unit" is a good look at the way this happens. And it reminds me of how much I missed by going to an all-boys high school. Ah well, too late to worry about that, and now I have this excellent book to show me what it would have been like.--Paul Sampson

The delicious and painful and sometimes deliciously painful years of growing in to love and your self is captured accurately and honestly in The Wandora Unit. An excellent choice for public libraries with Young Adult collections and High School libraries, the frank portrayal of "the first time" will be a comfort to many teens considering or evaluating the event. Thoughts of the real future, silliness, anxiety: everything a teen feels but may not talk about is in there.

A very honest cross section of one group's high school experience. Funny, but plausible dialogue. Thoughtful, with casual dips into the poetic, even when not specifically dealing with the poems that make up the backbone of the plot arc. This book definitely transported me back to my own years and high school. I found myself just as torn as the protagonist over whether to root for the friendship to survive or for each member of the "unit" to develop to the point where unity is neither sustainable nor desirable. You will call your best friend (or perhaps several friends) from high school when you finish.

The Wandora Unit brilliantly captures the essential qualities of high school friendships, the joy of words and of discovering their capacity for playfulness and artistic expression, the pleasure of immersing oneself in the writing of others and of producing it oneself, the extreme seriousness with which high school students regard themselves at some moments, the utter silliness of other moments, the simultaneous presence of kid and adult present in all teenagers, their absolute conviction that their world, the world that exists for them at a particular moment, will last forever, and the ultimate realization that everything is ephemeral. And it's just plain fun. An enthusiastic thumbs up!

I LOVED THIS BOOK!!! My 17 year old self especially loved this book and kept prodding me to go find a pen so I could underline things - but my 32 year old self is lazy and just wanted to sit and read until I read the whole thing.